"A Town Called Panic" is the only stop-motion animated feature film ever allowed into the festival at Cannes. The reason is apparent after watching this overly-long hodgepodge from Belgian directors Stéphane Aubier and Vincent Patar (the two have been operating together for 15 years in their animated joint ventures). Their productions are truly their babies because they are responsible for every detail, from creating each individual frame of animation to writing to directing. The origins for this have their genesis in Aubier and Patar's short animated films.
The characters are all plastic toy figures that might be found in any young child's toy chest. For this venture, 1,500 figures were used. The stars are Horse, Cowboy and Indian. Those are both the names and accurate descriptions of our featured players. They are all grizzled veterans of the Aubier-Patar "acting" stable but there's still life in their plastic joints.
Horse, Cowboy and Indian share a house in the countryside. Horse is condescending, terse and cold. Cowboy and Indian are idiots, with Indian probably being the brighter of the two but not by all that much. They all live as "normal" human beings in that they talk, eat, shower, argue and use the Internet. Their neighbors are similarly surreal. It's Horse's birthday and Cowboy and Indian are determined to get him a special gift this year and come up with buying him bricks and building him a barbecue, but they screw it up. Instead of buying 50 bricks, they purchase 50 million bricks online. The delivery of the bricks sets off a tidal wave of events that are funny and surreal. However, what might have made for a very strong 20 minutes turns into a tiresome 75 minutes.
"A Town Called Panic" is subtitled so I'm not sure whether or not it will be well received by American children but the sight gags are plentiful so it has a chance of keeping them entertained. More likely, it won't be able to hold their attention for the required time. As for the adults that will watch it, I suspect that they will find it less appealing and it may bring on yawns and hopes that it will end soon. "A Town Called Panic" displays true talent but the only panic it may induce is to wondering when an escape from it can be made.
